


the pandimensional welters circuit

by impossibletruths



Series: here's how quentin coldwater can still win [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Kady/Julia/Penny, Background Margo/Josh, Everybody Lives, Feelings, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, Playing Chess With Death Except It's Welters, Post-Season/Series 04, Team as Family, This Was Supposed To Be Crackfic But It's Not, Welters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 10:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19004065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: There's a longstanding tradition of playing Death for high-risk high-reward stakes: power, immortality, bragging rights. In this case, they're playing for Coldwater. And Margo––HBIC and best goddamn Welter's captain this side of the Neitherlands––isn't going down without a fight. No matter who complains about her choice of game.C'mon. As if they were gonna playchessfor Quentin Coldwater's mortal soul.





	the pandimensional welters circuit

**Author's Note:**

> Based off some [tags](https://serenity-the-firefly.tumblr.com/post/185184940628) on tumblr. It was supposed to be a joke. It very much turned out to be not-a-joke-at-all. Life's funny like that.

Eliot stares at her for a beat. And then another. Then he laughs, high and half panicked, and asks, “You did _what_?”

Margo’s hands settle on her hips, eyes narrowing. Battle position. Eliot blanches a little around the incredulity, as he should.

“It’s a longstanding and well-established narrative tradition,” she says slowly. Not that she needs to––they’ve all been doing the research; they know the traditions, longstanding and otherwise––but Eliot’s face is doing that two-seconds-from-panic thing so she can be nice and break it down for him. “So I figured, y’know, why the fuck not? And it worked, so I really don’t know why you’re complaining, El.”

“Yes, but. Did it have to be _that_?” He looks like he wants to pass out, which. On the one hand, it’s more of a relief than she’ll admit to see him animated about something after, well, everything. On the other: God, he can be such a _diva_ about this shit.

“Yeah, it did.”

“I just–– _Why_?”

“One,” she says, holding up a finger to illustrate her point, “we know the rules. Two, we’re good at it. Three, we’re fucking _good_ magicians, full stop. Four, working as a team means it’s not all up to one person. And five, I get to pick the game, so it’s gonna be Welters.” She narrows her eyes at him. “Unless you want to play chess for Quentin’s mortal soul?”

He doesn’t. He’s a firmly middling chess player, no more and no less, they both know it. Whereas, as she’s pointed out, they are good _fucking_ magicians, so it’s a no-brainer.

He clearly agrees with her, because he glances aside and admits, quietly, “No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“It’s just.” He pulls that face again with a delicate shudder. “ _Welters_.”

“Yes, _Welters_. Get your head out of your twat, El. We’re gonna save the dumbass and we’re gonna do whatever it takes to make it happen, right?”

That settles him a little bit, like she knew it would. It’s almost––yeah, she’ll admit it; she’s not heartless––sweet. He takes a deep breath, sets his shoulders, lifts his chin. His own battle position, intimately familiar and a relief to see. “Right.”

“So get your ass in your hot little uniform because we are playing with death and we’re gonna fucking win.”

He’s staring at her still, expression doing something strange and new for a flickering moment. She scowls. “ _What_?”

"Fond memories, Bambi,” he says. He looks a little nauseous but also blindingly hopeful, so. She’ll count it as a win.

Now they’ve just got the game to worry about.

They field a team of five, as per the rules. It includes herself, of course, and Eliot, and Josh––a shockingly good Welters player when he’s in the spirit for it, which he assures her he is since it’s Quentin’s soul on the line and all. Alice too––she’d refused to sit this one out no matter fucking what. (She hadn’t actually cursed when she’d stomped up to Margo and demanded to be on the team, but it had been implied pretty fucking clearly by the scowling and the glaring, as though she could project enough blunt force to get Margo to cave. Not that she needed it. Alice Quinn is a lot of things, including the cleanest caster of the lot of them, and Margo’s not an idiot no matter what people like to think about pretty girls.)

Julia rounds out the team. Margo had meant to ask Kady––for old time’s sake and all––but Julia interrupted before she even finished getting the words out, so.

Actually, Margo hadn’t been immediately thrilled, which was perfectly fair given Wicker’s track record, she thought. She’d frowned and asked, “Can you even do magic? I thought you were, y’know. Out of commission or whatever. With the god shit.”

“I can cast,” Julia Wicker had said, quiet and fierce, and flickered through a series of tuts almost too fast for Margo to follow which, hey. More power to her.

But, still. A girl’s gotta check, and check in too. They’ve had it bad but she had it worse than most, so–– “You sure about this?”

“Quentin’s mine,” she had replied, which. Metal as fuck, really. Who was Margo to say no to that?

God knows if it were Eliot–– Well, it had been Eliot, sort of, and––

Point is, she gets it. So, teammate five: Julia.

They meet at a predetermined location, because traveling to an interdimensional pocket world to play Death for someone’s soul turns out to be sort of tricky and they’ve got to go––no kidding; it’s actually in the rules for this thing–– _where the veil is thin_.

This turns out to be the narrow parking lot outside a karaoke bar in Poughkeepsie. Magic is such bullshit sometimes.

Penny 23 is already there with Kady––who has, apparently, insisted on coming along too; the more the merrier––and Julia when Margo, Eliot and Josh arrive via portal. 23 looks totally unimpressed, and also even less thrilled than usual which is saying something. His mouth has this whole pinched look going on, and he pulls her aside briefly while they wait for Alice. Inside the bar someone belts an off-key rendition of My Heart Will Go On.

“You have any idea how many ways this could go wrong?” he hisses, arms folded tight across his chest in a way that makes her think sharp and aching of their Penny. Not the time, she tells herself.

“Yeah, I do,” Margo hisses back. “We all do, and we’re all here anyway, so buckle up, buttercup, we’re making this happen.”

He stares at her for a moment, and she thinks––just for a heartbeat, just a _twinge_ ––that maybe he’ll say no and she’ll have to use extreme force or make Julia like, cry on him or something. But he just sighs.

“Long as you’re sure.” He sounds like he means it too, in a like, God-help-us-all sort of way, which. Is almost sweet of him, given how his last attempt to deal with a resurrected Quentin Coldwater went.

She kisses him on the cheek, and his ears goes just a little pink.

“You’re not half bad, 23,” she says, and he scowls like she knew he would.

“Whatever.”

They’re all rescued from the possibility of heartfelt conversation or actual feelings by Alice’s arrival. She’s driving a car, which. Seems like it should be vaguely illegal, or maybe the world really is ending. But she just does a neat little parallel parking job somewhere that’s definitely a no-parking zone and steps out in her skirt and her cardigan and folds her arms tight across herself and says, already impatient, “Well?”

“Hands in,” sighs Eliot, like he’s not fucking vibrating with whatever concoction of stress and hope he’s carrying tucked away in his heart. She takes his hand and squeezes and gets a wide-eyed look back that almost makes her want to call _him_ Bambi.

She smiles––reassuring, just for him––and links up with Penny on the other side.

“Alright, let’s do this shit,” she says, and with a television static flicker they’re gone.

And–– elsewhere.

“I thought you were joking about the uniforms,” Josh complains, and Margo can admit to being kinda pissed to find herself in her old Welters blacks.

Though, only kinda. This uniform does great things for her tits.

“I was,” she grouses, and looks around.

It’s the Brakebills’ Welters field, the practice one tucked away outside past the Sea. In fact, she’d almost think they were back at Brakebills, except the sky is the color of television static and the trees around the field bleed away to white, like color running off the edge of a painting. The whole thing makes her skin crawl, so instead of thinking too hard about the stability of extraplanar pocket dimensions she looks around for the personification of mortality themself.

She finds them in the referee’s seat, perched about ten feet up above the field. Her hands find her hips again. They’re comfortable there, okay? It’s a power stance thing.

Plus, if they’re on her hips no one can see that she’s shaking. Two birds, one stone and all that. She scowls up at them.

“Hey!”

Their faceless, empty hood turns towards her. It’s absolutely no less creepy than it was the first time she saw it, even though they’re so relatively far apart now and not chatting over tea and scones.

Which had been–– Anyway. She’s seen weirder shit. Probably.

WELCOME, they say. Everyone shudders at the not-voice that rings from no-where. Alice does the best job of hiding it. Eliot looks like he might throw up. No judgement; Margo had gagged a little through the whole setting-the-terms meeting she’d had to get the ball rolling, so to speak.

“Yeah, happy to be here. So what now? Where’s the other team?”

ARRIVING.

"No they–– Oh, shit.” Josh blanches. Margo blanches too.

Next to her, Eliot’s hand reaches out for her shoulder like he needs the lifeline, and he mutters, “This is a big uh-oh.”

“We’re fine,” she tells him tersely, not feeling it at all, and watches the opposition curl up from the ground like smoke, solidifying into solid figures.

It’s... well, it’s them. All of them, even Kady and Penny who aren’t even here to play, standing just off to the side, wearing the same uniform in white. In her fairy eye they look like Death, all hollow and empty and faceless, which makes the overlay of themselves even creepier, if that’s possible. Her stomach does a nice little jig and she tells it to calm the fuck down. She takes a deep breath and––power stance, she’s a high goddamn king, she’s got this––turns back towards Death.

“Is this some sort of joke?”

IT IS A GAME. She’s not sure anthropomorphized concepts can have a sense of humor, but this chucklehead sure seems to be giving it a go. Margo takes another breath, but Alice beats her to it.

“What about Quentin?”

THE WINNER WILL LEAD HIM HENCE, AS PER THE TERMS OF THE ARRANGEMENT.

“Is he okay though?” Julia demands.

YES.

Wicker doesn’t back down, which. Margo’s gotta respect the steel ovaries she’s clearly got. “Prove it.”

Death–– _looms_ , there’s no better word for it. It’s like suddenly all the color drains away and everything is just static and _nothingness_ , and Julia Wicker tilts her chin up and says, again, “Prove. It.”

Margo is really fucking glad she’s on their side. And kind of worried that she’s also, like, not.

A beat passes. Then another. The air grows thick and cloying with... something. Power, maybe. It smells like ozone and makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Eliot squeezes her shoulder tighter. She grabs in hand, partly warning and partly in search of the support. Something’s going to give and she’s not sure what.

Then Death sits back again. VERY WELL, LITTLE GODLING. HERE IS PROOF.

And suddenly–– Quentin is there.

Yeah, okay, she’ll admit it––her knees go a little weak, and she forces every fucking muscle in her body to stay standing tall and proud. Which is a good thing too, because Eliot full on sways against her, takes half a step forward. “Q––”

He’s not the only one. Julia, Alice, even 23 all shift forward towards him, magnets realigning, finding north. He stares at all of them clustered together on the far side of the board, still zipped up in his dark little hoodie, one lock of hair falling in his eyes. He stands under the referee stand––in the shadow, Margo would say, except there’s no light source to cast it, everything washed-out and drab here in Death’s weird little pocket court. None of them dare cross the field to reach him, but–– Well, shit. Here he is.

Margo’s mouth is weirdly dry. Huh.

“Um,” says Quentin. “Guys? What’s going on?”

“We’re saving your dumb ass, that’s what,” Kady tells him. She seems to be fully in control of her faculties, but then, she’s played with the whole life-and-death shit before. Quentin looks at them a little longer, then the board.

“Is this... Welters?”

“It coulda been Chinese checkers,” Margo tells him, because snark has always been a comfortable fallback and seriously, could people stop judging her choice? It’s not like any of them managed to go mano-a-mano with Death to set up a little game. “Don’t judge.”

“I’m–– Okay. Yeah, um. Okay.”

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Alice says, all ice and stubbornness. Quentin looks at them, and then at the other team in their creepy Mayakovsky whites milling around on the far side.

He blanches too. Good to know everyone’s feeling shit about this. Rounds out the team.

Julia takes another half forward, standing right on the edge of the board.

“Q,” she says, intense, eyes only for him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m...” His expression trembles, cracks splinter across the facade. “I don’t know, Jules.”

She takes a deep breath, shoulders tight. “We’re gonna get you out, ok?”

Margo can’t see her face, but her voice is horribly soft in an intimate way that makes Margo want to like, slap her hands over her eyes or stick her fingers in her ears so she won’t interrupt. Which. What a bunch of bullshit.

Quentin nods, and that’s trembling too. Margo bites the inside of her cheek. She’s _not_ going to let her team cock out on her now.

“You stay right where you are, Coldwater. Get your pom poms and mini skirt if you want but don’t you dare fuck this up for us.”

Then, before she can catch any more of his reaction than the way his mouth half opens in protest, she turns back to the rest of her team, all of them staring at Quentin with various levels of emotional turmoil.

“Hey,” she says to them. Then, louder, “Hey, _assholes_.”

“What?” snaps Julia. Margo levels a glare that more than matches her own. This is her team and she’s gonna make sure they fucking _win this shit._

“Enough with the goddamn pity party. We’re not gonna help the kid if we’re all crying into our hankies so buck the fuck up and get your head in the game.”

“Was that...” Josh frowns. “Was that a High School Musical reference?”

“Wildcats, motherfucker,” she says, and it wins enough of a chuckle––or groan maybe––to stir them to action.

Except Eliot, who’s still turned towards Quentin like he’s magnetic north or whatever. Margo’s heart does another funny little twisting thing and she ignores it because now is _not_ the goddamn time.

“Eliot,” she says. “Hey. _El_.”

“Yeah, I’m listening.”

She cocks her head at him and asks, testing: “What team?”

His eyes flicker to her for a second, then back to Quentin. “What?”

She rolls her eyes and then––carefully, because she loves him, she really does, enough to let the world burn, and she nearly had––reaches up to take his face in her hands. She can practically hear the rip as he tears his gaze away from Quentin.

“We’re gonna win him back,” she says quietly, eyes locked on his. “I promise, I swear to you, we’re going to win him back. But I need you to _play_ , okay? Like you’ve never goddamn played before. Think you can do that?”

He takes a deep breath. Then another. Squares his shoulders, and there he is, her best friend, her first love, High King of Fillory. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I can do that.” And then, “I still can’t believe you picked _Welters_.”

“Shut the fuck up and play.”

They position themselves at the board. Quentin hovers below the ref stand for a moment, then sinks down to sit on the grass, knees pulled up tight. Kady and 23 stand off to the side, Kady with her arms folded tight and Penny looking like he’s ready to make a dash for them at any time. Margo stares up at Death.

“Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s play ball.”

AS YOU WISH, says Death mildly, and the dodecahedron appears in her hand. LET THE GAME BEGIN.

Margo throws the ball, and they’re off.

It becomes clear pretty early on that this isn’t some ordinary game of Welters. The whole playing-against-our-mirror-selves made that obvious pretty quickly, sure, but the Circumstances are all over the place. Eliot wins a square whose parameters match the last extended Autumn they had in Fillory; Josh gets one whose Circumstances are clearly matched to the Neitherlands. Even the magic in the air is... strange. Viscous, almost, and not entirely willing to respond to them. Margo loses a square played perfectly because she can’t get a handle on the slippery sensation of power just out of reach, and faceless mirrorverse Julia nearly blows them all up when she channels something way bigger than fits the board. Margo, fresh from her loss, throws up a shield spell, and only mirror Josh loses his eyebrows, which.

“Honestly not as bad as I’d thought,” says her Josh, and they play on.

And on.

And _on_.

For every square they take from the other team, their other selves take one back. Defending is easy because they know how they play, and impossible because their other selves know that too. It’s a stalemate of epic––literally life-and-death––proportions, and the sky remains static above them, utterly unchanging. Hours could pass, or days, or years, and they would never know, save that slowly they wear themselves down.

Margo finds herself in a vicious standoff with herself, vying back and forth over the same couple of squares each time the ball comes to her. She’s so fed up she could scream.

They shift through turns: Alice who nimbly steals a square out from under mirror Alice, who in turn steals it back, and then Eliot who looks _furious_ , casting in short sharp bursts with his jaw clenched tight, then weird doppelgänger Eliot has a go at El’s square and wins it with a cocky little smirk, then Julia who gets an easy win and the other team’s Julia who fumbles a casting and swears, and on it goes. Quentin sits in the shadow of the referee stand, chewing on his thumb nail, and Death presides over all.

Margo watches it drag on and shakes off a growing cloud of hopelessness. They’ll never get anywhere like this. There has to be a trick. There’s always a fucking trick.

Their Josh goes and then it’s back to her. She holds the ball loosely in one hand, surveying the board. It’s a gridlocked game, all of them paired off against themselves. They have to do something to change it up. Something to beat themselves, something to win, something––

Ah, shit.

All of them paired off against themselves.

She gets it.

Sometimes magic is _such_ bullshit. God.

She eyes the other team, and settles on opposition Eliot. He’s got a bland, haughty look across his face, like he’s twenty-two again and careless, nothing can touch him. She knows better. She lobs the ball in his direction, nearly hits actual Eliot in the process.

“Watch it!”

“I’m trying something here, chill.”

The Circumstances are for a clear night in South America, late October, lunar eclipse, Nature spell. She grows tiny little white blossoms across the grassy square, a spell she’s seen Josh do. His flowers are usually big, yellow trumpets, but she’s going for something else. Delicate. Peaceful.

Death leans forward on the stand as she takes the square.

Next is opposition Margo, who tries to go after the same square, but the other Eliot is right there and she misses, lands on one they’ve already got. She stalks over to it, clearly unhappy. The ball goes to Alice, who gets ready to throw it at the intensely complicated web of a casting she’s been battling other Alice over, but––

“Wait.” Margo’s gotta do some team captain-ing around here, clearly. “Take his.” She points at mirror Josh.

Alice raises an eyebrow, mouth pinched, but does as Margo insists. Mostly because Margo scowls at her when she opens her mouth to disagree, so. Her fingers flicker through a spell Margo doesn’t recognize and the shallow square of water erupts like a geyser, droplets turning to snow as they fall. It’s some fancy fucking magic. She hears 23 whistle behind her.

And Quinn barely even looks smug as she stomps over there.

Mirror Alice tries to take the square back, but the snow is still falling, and she can’t get the spell to hold. Margo starts to feel a little less helpless about the whole thing. Eliot is up.

“Take freaky me,” Margo tells him. He frowns.

“Why?”

“Cause we’re going to get nowhere fighting ourselves but we can make this happen if we work together.” She waves a hand. “It’s some teamwork shit or something.”

Eliot blinks, owlish. “Seriously?”

“Just throw the ball, El.”

His mouth twitches, but he does, and he wins the square, and says, “Huh,” afterwards like it’s some big surprise or something.

“Told you so,” she says sweetly.

“You did,” he agrees, and the ball passes on to his freaky doppelgänger and the game moves on.

But, changed.

It’s still slow going––like, unbearably slow, like introducing-democracy-to-Fillory slow–– _but_ , slowly and surely, the game begins to turn in their favor. Their freaky, silent mirror selves keep going after them time and time again, and by switching up the board––now neat and precise Alice battling Josh’s wild surges of power, now Margo nimbly casting circles around Julia’s blunt, crooked forms, now their Julia bullying her way through mirror Alice’s defenses, now Eliot meeting Margo’s counterpart blow-for-blow until she gives ground––team Brakebills starts making headway.

And starts _keeping_ it.

The final play comes to Eliot. It’s just him against himself, the rest of the weirdo ghost team standing just on the edge of the board, nearly pushed back. Margo’s mouth tastes like cotton and her head hurts and victory is so close she can _taste_ it. Eliot’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

“Please,” he mutters, and the only reason she hears it is that she’s one square over, right next to him, “don’t let me fuck this up.”

And he throws the ball.

The Circumstances are... odd. Mid afternoon, sunny day, late spring, somewhere with two moons to take into account instead of one, phases waxing gibbous and waning crescent. Element of air. Eliot’s throat bobs again.

“Bring our boy back,” Margo tells him, and he takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders and starts to cast.

He chooses a strange spell, something part conjuration and part illusion. His fingers work through a frankly painful looking series of forms, twisting and untwisting, and he mutters in a dialect of Greek she half remembers from a seminar she’d dropped halfway through––too much theory, not enough opportunities to bribe the TA. She hadn’t realized he’d stuck with any of it.

Or, maybe he’d just stuck with the TA.

However he knows it, he speaks now in smooth, curling phrases, fingers twisting and dipping like birds on the wind, and she watches as the air condenses above the square of gravel, a tight little ball of energy the same static color as the sky. Eliot’s eyes narrow and he speaks faster, and then––

His fingers spread apart, thumbs tucked under, and the pocket of air bursts, spilling flower petals across the board as a brisk spring breeze picks up, carding through her hair and curling across the clearing. It smells like peaches, and sounds like a child’s laughter.

The other Eliot takes a step back, ceding the board, and Eliot takes the square, breathing heavily. Only Margo can see the tear tracks on his face, which he wipes at angrily.

And then–– that’s it. They’ve won.

For a moment, nobody speaks, echo of a child’s laughter still drifting around them. Quentin’s face is doing something twisting and terrible, and she would be worried for him except his eyes are shining and full, so. She doesn’t pretend to have the slightest idea what that’s about, but she thinks maybe it’s something to do with petals and peaches and a child’s laughter, and decides to grill Eliot about it later. Right now there are more important things.

She turns to Death, still sitting up on the stand, faceless and looming and just, like, really creepy in general. A shiver climbs up her spine and she strangles it.

“Well?” she says, projecting as much impatience as she can muster.

It’s a lot. The game took for fucking ever. “We win. Give us Q.”

WELL PLAYED, says Death. AS PROMISED, QUENTIN COLDWATER WILL LEAVE WITH YOU.

“Alive and unharmed,” Margo insists. They spent a _long_ time going over the language and loopholes of the deal. They’ve all read enough cautionary tales about playing with dead things.

Death inclines their head. ALIVE AND UNHARMED, AND JUST AS HE WAS. HE WILL NOT SUFFER FOR THE TIME SPENT HERE.

“Good,” says Margo.

And she strides across the field to yank him up by his hand.

His skin is a little cold against hers, clammy, but it’s flesh and blood enough, and when she grips his wrist she can feel his pulse tha-thump tha-thump tha-thumping under her fingers. He stares at her, eyes wide and damp.

“You _so_ owe me one,” she tells him, and then her lip starts wobbling and she has to hug him tight and bruising before she loses her composure. His hand comes up to her back, a little uncertain, then solid.

“Yeah, Margo,” he agrees, and he even smells the same, like he probably needs a shower. Gross. God she missed him. “I definitely owe you one.”

“Fuck, Q,” she says against his shoulder, voice shaky. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

His hand presses against her back. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

She pulls out of the hug and punches him in the arm. Hard.

“Ow, Margo––”

“You better fucking not,” she says, and he rubs at his arm and looks a little lost, and a little ashamed too, and she feels a little terrible and a lot bonelessly relieved so she kisses his cheek and lets someone else have at him.

Julia reaches him first and damn near tackles him, both of them stumbling as she buries her face in his shoulder, shaking. Q tucks his face against her hair and strokes her back, murmuring something to her, and she laughs through the tears and kisses his cheek and steps back. Alice goes in for a hug a little awkward, and they dance around each other a moment before Q wraps his arms around her stiff shoulders. They stand like that for a long time, long enough for Penny and Kady to join them. Kady grabs Julia’s hand. Julia smiles at her, watery, and leans her head against Penny’s shoulder.

Which. Alright, then.

Alice and Q are clearly talking, quiet and low. Alice says something in his ear that makes him cry harder, and then something else that makes him laugh, and when she pulls back he kisses her forehead.

“Okay,” he says with a watery smile. “That sounds good.”

“Good,” says Alice, clearly... not pleased, maybe, but settled. She’s got that set to her mouth like she’s made her decision and she’s standing by it. Margo approves.

“Hey, man,” says Josh, heartfelt and a little awkward. He goes in for a handshake, then one of those big clap-on-the-back hugs. Quentin weathers it with aplomb, tear tracks down his face and looking kind of like he’s just been hit with a bus, which. Is fair, maybe, given the circumstances. “Glad you’re not dead. Undead. Y’know.”

“Yeah, me too,” says Quentin. “Uh, good game.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“You’re not gonna go crazy now, are you?” asks Penny from where he stands next to Julia. Quentin frowns.

“I don’t, um. Think so?”

“Cause I’ve had enough of that shit for one lifetime.”

“If I start feeling homicidal you’ll be the first to know.”

“Well... good.”

“Don’t do that again, dipshit,” says Kady.

“I’ll try not to.”

“You fucking better.”

Her hand goes tighter around Julia’s. Margo politely pretends not to notice.

And then––and Margo knows it’s coming because she’s seen Quentin at least once in the past six months fighting tooth and nail to save El’s life, and because she’s seen Eliot in the aftermath and the frightening, hollow shell of a person he became, and because they’re both so fucking dramatic about everything, Jesus––Q steps forward and says:

“Eliot?”

“Hi, Q,” says Eliot, and then it’s like fucking magnetism, or the last scene in a romcom, and Quentin steps forward right into Eliot’s arms and Eliot just fucking wraps him up like a goddamn blanket, and it’s embarrassing how sweet it is.

Margo feels her own eyes go hot and angrily brushes away a tear. God. It’s fine. It’s whatever. They’ve won so it’s all, just, fine.

Eliot’s shoulders are shaking and Quentin’s shoulders are shaking, and she can make out the odd phrase–– _fuck_ and _so sorry_ and _never again_ and _love you_ and all other sorts of sappy shit she’s sure they’ll spend ages talking around once things aren’t life and death any more but, hey, if it means they’ve got time to figure out how to fucking talk to each other, who’s she to judge?

Happily ever fucking after never sounded so goddamn good. Now they’ve just gotta get out of purgatory or wherever the fuck they are.

Death, it seems, has similar ideas. YOU SHOULD NOT TARRY LONG. TRAVELER, TAKE YOUR COMPANIONS AND LEAVE.

“Yeah, yeah,” mutters Penny 23, who looks pretty fucking freaked to be addressed by Actual Death. Understandable. “C’mon, losers, cry over each other later.”

“Shut up, Penny,” says Eliot, but he lets Margo take his hand, and Quentin unfurls himself to take his other hand, and then there’s Julia on his other side and then Kady and Josh and Alice and Penny next to Margo and they flicker and they are––

Back.

The freakishly big, weirdly nice, kind of untouchable apartment has never looked so inviting. Margo sinks down onto the couch and puts her head in her hands and gives herself thirty seconds to lose it. She’s earned it at this point, really.

“Fuck,” she says, and then starts laughing, and can’t stop laughing, and no one ever bothers to ask if she’s okay––which she _is_ thank you very much she just beat Death in a game of Welters take _that_ Dean Fogg, they are _the_ undisputed champions, international circuit be damned they just won the _interplanar_ game––because they’re laughing too, horrible and hysterical and just so

fucking

_alive._

When she takes her hands off her face Quentin has folded himself up into Eliot again, and they are–– kissing, _finally_ , good for them, get a room, etc. Alice looks–– amused, maybe, in a kind of wry, also- _finally_ sort of way, and she rolls her eyes when Margo raises an eyebrow which Margo thinks is hilarious and probably a defense mechanism but, hey, she can relate.

Josh falls on Margo’s other side, sinking into the couch with a sigh. “Did you know you’re incredibly attractive when you’re taking charge?”

“Obviously.”

He doesn’t look put out by her tone, only fond, which is, y’know, nice cause she likes the guy like, an embarrassing amount and, anyway, whatever, point is––

They’re here and they’re alive and Quentin is crying into Eliot’s nice waistcoat and reaching for Julia at the same time and Kady is brining the beers out of the fridge because they deserve a _goddamn_ drink after that shit and Josh is letting her list against him without saying anything and Alice’s eyes are crinkling at the corner and Penny 23 is complaining about all the fucking _crying_ and they’re here and together and _happy_ , who the fuck ever would have thought.

Things will probably be shit again by tomorrow. That’s how things work with them. She needs to bunny Fen and text Fogg, and Alice and Kady have shit to do with the Library, and there’s that godling comment Death mentioned to Julia which will _definitely_ need to be considered but whatever. That can wait. They have tonight, at least.

They’ve earned this win. Literally.

Eliot sits down with a sigh, dragging Q down with him, all bundled up in his hoodie and looking dazed, which might be from the whole raised-from-the-dead thing or may be from Eliot’s mouth all over his. Maybe both. Julia sits on Quentin's other side, fingers laced tight in his, face tear stained. Penny brings her a beer. Margo takes a deep breath.

“So,” she says. “Not bad, guys. Coldwater––”

“I know,” he says. “I owe you.”

“Like, a billion,” agrees Eliot, as if that at all hides how he’s staring at Q like the nerd hung the fucking sun and all the stars.

Quentin laughs, watery and warm. Eliot takes a long pull from his beer and adds, sullen, “I fucking hate Welters.”

They all drink to that.

**Author's Note:**

> Margo used some of Josh's magical herb(TM) to meet Death over tea-and-scones after much trial and error. No one was particularly happy about it.
> 
> come shout about the magicians with me on [tumblr](http://impossibletruths.tumblr.com/)


End file.
